Property specialist Cairn Letting has reported a 103 per cent rise in turnover and 74 per cent rise in gross profit this year, fuelled by a surge in demand for property investment opportunities.

Managing director David Rowland said the strong results were driven by the high volume of cash-rich investors entering the traditional build property market.

The Glasgow-based company said turnover for the year ending September 30 had grown from £349,000 in 2008 to more than £708,000 for the 2009 reporting year.

Profits were also more than double that reported last year, up from £264,000 last year to £460,000 this year.

Rowland now plans to open a new office in Edinburgh and increase the number of properties under management from 400 to more than 600 next year.

He said: "When we started we were a re development company buying properties, fixing them up and selling them on, and we turned over more than 160 properties in six years, with most sold on - the remainder we had in a small portfolio used as collateral in the buy-out.

"We had just started to get into letting before the buy-out, which then became the primary focus of the business going forward. Our financial performance since the buy-out has grown by more than 250 per cent in three years.

"The company has now grown to a letting portfolio in excess of 400 units under management from 130 three years ago.

"Our biggest single landlord has 56 flats under management but we look after single properties on behalf of small investors too.

"In 2008, as the problems in the financial markets began to take hold, we then saw people with money moving into the property market because values have fallen considerably and owners have come under significant pressure from banks changing their lending criteria to buy-to-let customers.

"In the last 18-months we have bought more than 60 flats for investors with 40 more going through the legal process at the moment, which has been a fairly massive upturn for us."

Rowland believes reported house price rises in recent months are being fuelled by a lack of available housing stock pushing prices up, and believes more investors will look to pile into traditional build property investment as a safer long-term investment.

He said: "At the moment we aren't seeing evidence of people taking the traditional route of selling a flat and moving up the property ladder.

"The market and lending criteria are definitely an issue, as is the overall uncertainty in terms of employment, and there appears to be a lengthy battening down of the hatches while uncertainty remains.

"The slump in estate agency activity has been to our advantage in the last year, as we have managed to lure exceptional talent we would never have had access to two years ago, and this has helped both the letting and real estate side of the business grow in the last year."